No, I'm not really running for president,
I'm just trying to solve the world's problems in my own mind, that's all.

Monday, November 7, 2016

An Awkward Proposal for an Amendment to Correct Election Processes

Amendments are extreme means. The travesty of the current
presidential election rather calls for at least suggesting extreme
means.

The president is not supposed to be king/queen for
the day or for four years. He or she is supposed to be there to keep
Congress in check and be the head of a limited executive branch. He or
she is supposed to just be another ordinary citizen with what is
supposed to be just a relatively ordinary job.

But now we
have Congress holding court with their retainers, whom we call lobbiests
and vested interest groups and political parties. When government was
small, there was no reason for the retinue.

And we have the courts holding court with their retinue of lawyers, etc. When government was small, ...

And
we have the presidential contenders holding court with their retainers
-- the political parties and campaign committees, etc.

My wife is listening to the radio in the morning as usual.

The talk show host is commenting on the US elections, comparing the presidential race to AKB-48's popularity contests. My wife says the comparison is insulting to AKB-48. (My family is none of us fans of the idol manufacturing entertainment corporations, and AKB-48 often gets particularly critical evaluations.) I know the comparison is not unique, and it isn't even the first time Dojo has said it. And American pundits and commentators have compared this election unfavorably to American Idol, too.

But it's really bad this year.

I explained to my daughter that things are not supposed to get this bad.

Now, I personally think that neither Clinton nor Trump would be the worst president elected in the US.

Mr. Trump, if the ironic happens and the decoy gets elected, would have to pick a cabinet, the cabinet would have to be approved, and such a cabinet would help him figure out what a president really is allowed to do. Unfortunately, he would thereby be easily turned into a puppet of the power mongers who think they are the hidden aristocracy.

Ms. Clinton's approach to politics has improved a bit since eight years ago. But she definitely let's her mother's instinct for protectionism interfere with her comprehension of the general duties of citizenship. The e-mails thing and other such blunders I chalk up to the people she has gathered around her. And she definitely has shown herself to be manipulable by those power mongers.

Either way, there is likely to be some more unfortunate erosion in the Constitutional checks-and-balances.

And it is not the personalities that are the problem here.

It's the reinterpretations, the changes in traditions such that a particular Constitutional restriction really doesn't mean what it says any more, so that they can "accomplish" the "things" that their backers want.

We need to untangle partisan politics from all of the political processes, and one place to start is the presidential campaign.

We are told (by whom?) that the electoral college was intended to provide a buffer between popular opinion and the office of president.

I don't believe it. Maybe that was what some people thought.

My impression is that the electoral college was really intended to provide an organized way to get the results of the state balloting safely to the capital for this one office that has to be elected by all the states.

In the late 1700s, we had unreliable postal roads. (erk!) No TV, no telephone, definitely no Internet.

And the Constitution was not designed to bring all the states together into one homogenized nation. Each state has its own Constitution and its own laws. That includes election law.

So we had the problem of different election processes in each state, meaning that a citizen's vote in Virginia was not the quite same as a citizen's vote in New Hampshire.

The electoral college was intended as a way to let each state handle elections its own way, and then the states themselves pass their results up to the national level. It was intended as a protection against vote tampering.

As a convenience, it also provided for difficult cases such as statistical ties.

Florida's "hanging chads"?

Florida was a failure of the system. It wasn't the first time we'd seen that particular failure. Florida was a statistical tie. No way is less than one percent difference meaningful.

Elections are statistical processes. At the time the Electoral College was established, the methods and means for transmitting the results of the processes were not well established. Some of the statistical mathematics were also not generally understand.

And, what is more important, what might have worked well in one state probably would not have worked well in another.

Once again, as I understand it, the Electoral College was not to protect the office from popular opinion so much as it was to protect the transmission of the results.

What has happened now is that the two predominant political parties have essentially hijacked the election processes, establishing their own machinery (the primary elections being the most prominently visible parts) for state operated methods of choosing electors.

The most effective way to protect abused power is to hide it.

Can we get that through our heads?

Putin is a figurehead -- a strong figurehead, but he can not go against the real power holders if he wants to stay alive.

Kim Jung Un is so hard to decrypt precisely because he is trying to work the real powers in Korea against each other, and it's not really working the way he expects.

Obama wanted to do a lot of good things, but the limits he ran up against were not just Constitutional limits.

So, we need to break the political parties' hold on the election. That means that we need to change something. (And we'll have to revisit this question again in a few decades, I'm sure. Social engineers are always so blind to the results of their manipulations.)

So, I'm proposing:

An Amendment to Correct the Elections Processes.

[Except this is way too much detail to be made part of the Constitution. I really need to refine the ideas here a bit more.]

Section 1: Ballots used for national elections, including state processes for national elections, and the processes for casting ballots, shall conform to the following requirements:

The ballots shall be rendered in physical and durable form.

The ballots shall be directly readable by all who use them, including the person legally casting the ballot and the persons who, by law or judicial direction, count the ballots.

The ballot shall not change form in casting, submission, transmission, or storage except the minimum necessary changes to provide for the anonymity of the person casting the ballot.

The person casting the ballot may request help from a qualified voter of his or her own choice.

The form of the ballot shall provide anonymity in all elections except where there is unusual, overriding, pressing, and temporary need to identify the person casting the ballot with the ballot cast. In any case, elections for the President, House of Representatives, Senate, and any elected judicial office of the United States shall always be conducted in a manner which protects anonymity.

The form of the ballot shall also provide means of confirming that the number of ballots counted matches the number of ballots cast.

The content of the ballot shall be protected from discovery until
after it has been separated from whatever means has been provided to
confirm the ballot count, and until after it has been submitted and
stored for counting.

Counting shall not proceed until after the polling area is closed for further ballots.

A person requesting a new ballot to replace a spoiled one shall physically and visibly destroy the spoiled ballot and return it. Destroyed ballots shall be kept separately from cast ballots at all times, and shall not be counted except to determine that the total count of ballots used matches the total count provided for the election.

All ballots shall be kept for the purpose of confirming both the process and the result until such time as determined by state or national law.

The methods and means for counting the ballots and transmitting the results to the respective government officers who by law receive them shall be open to review.

Casting multiple ballots in any national election shall be tried as a
misdemeanor crime. Aiding and abetting the casting of multiple ballots in
any national election shall be tried as a capital crime. Repeated offenses may be
punished by temporarily or permanently revoking the privilege of
voting, as determined by the courts for a particular case. [And I really
need to work more on the language of this one, too.]

Section 2: The President and Vice President of the United States shall be chosen by direct vote of qualified citizens of the United States in their states of primary residence.

Each candidate standing for the office of either President or Vice President shall stand as a candidate for both offices.

The ballots shall provide for the choice of any of the candidates for President and Vice President, once as choice for President, and once as choice for Vice President. The ballots shall also provide for a write-in candidate, and for an explicit vote against all of the candidates in each office.

[Yes, I think that it should be possible to vote for one from one party and one from another, and I think it should be possible to vote for the same candidate for both offices, should one desire to do so.]

When counting the vote of a write-in candidate, it should be recorded and counted as it is written.

A runoff election shall be held when there is no clear winner for either office, or when the combined count of votes against and votes for write-in candidates are the highest votes for either office. Also, a runoff election shall be held when one candidate receives the highest count of votes for both offices.

There is no clear winner when the highest count and the second highest count are within one percent of each other, one percent meaning one percent of total votes cast for that office.

When a runoff election is held, all candidates whose count of votes for a particular office in the original election is within five percent of the highest count for that office shall be invited to stand again, five percent meaning five percent of the total votes cast. Also, when a runoff election is required, anyone who can reasonably demonstrate their claim to be a write-in candidate receiving more than one percent of the total vote shall be invited to stand.

Further, when a runoff election is required and votes against all the candidates exceeds ten percent of the total votes cast, new candidates shall be allowed to stand in the runoff election. Again, if there are less than two candidates to stand, new candidates shall be allowed to stand in the runoff.

The runoff election shall be held six weeks after the original election. All candidates standing in the runoff election shall register their candidacy in each state at least a week before the runoff election.

The runoff election shall allow for neither write-in candidates nor a vote against all candidates, unless no new candidates stand. If no new candidates stand, write-in candidates shall be allowed.

If a write-in candidate appears to receive the most votes for either office in the runoff election, a confirmation election shall be held to choose from among those who can demonstrate reasonable claim to being the winning write-in candidate. The states shall make no effort to prevent such demonstration of reasonable claim. This election shall be held three weeks after the runoff election. Those who stand in the confirmation election shall register in each state during the two weeks following the runoff election. The states shall not make unreasonable requirements for their registration. The ballot shall provide for explicitly voting against all candidates on the confirmation ballot.

If there is no clear winner for either office after a runoff election and any confirmation election, the House of Representatives shall as soon as possible choose by vote from among the candidates in the runoff and confirmation elections receiving more than ten percent of the respective total votes. If no two candidates have received more than ten percent of the vote, they shall choose from among the candidates receiving more than five percent. If no two candidates receive more than five percent, they shall choose from among all the candidates. A quorum of three fourths of the House shall be required, and they shall vote first for the President, and then for the Vice President.

Section 3: If this amendment is ratified within one month of a presidential election, it will take not take effect until that election has been completed.

If this amendment is ratified, it will be reviewed and either repealed or updated after twenty years.